2014

Good year for reading, man. It started off rough, but then I started taking the bus to work every day and that gave me two uninterrupted hours a day to pound through the pages. My goal for 2014 was to read 50 books. When I started the regular commute in June, I was 8 books behind schedule. I ended the year well past my goal. I’ve posted a full run-down of the metrics similar to what I did for 2012.

Besides the goal for reading 50 books, I was also of the mindset that I wanted to branch out and not read mostly science fiction, like I had done in years past. Thus, I made pointed choices to start reading a lot more non-fiction, and that helped. Sci-fi was still the lion’s share, but 2014 was a lot more balanced than previous years.

That said, by mid-November, I was getting pretty sick of reading. I finished The Girl With All the Gifts, and then floundered about for what to read next. Which is exactly what happened after I read Dataclysm. Clearly, I’d crammed a lot of reading into the previous six months.

Twenty-fourteen was one of my most productive on the bike in a long time. A large contributing factor to this was the location of where we’re living in relation to the Minnesota River Bluffs Trail, and my new job in downtown Minneapolis. This allowed me to pile on the miles as the one-way route was between 23 and 25 miles (the trail was closed due to landslides in July). I was also able to capitalize on those miles by making a return to cyclocross racing, which I’d missed quite a bit.

I was very careful to log everything I did with the Garmin and upload all my data to Strava. Not all of my wattage data was accurate as my mountain bike doesn’t have a power meter, and the road bike only had it while the Powertap-equipped wheelset was attached (training and commuting) — it also died during the Powderhorn 24, recording far fewer miles than I actually accomplished.

This was a monumentally weird year. It started difficult — I was unemployed, and our unemployment insurance had run out, we had to put the house on the market, and Kate’s Honda was totaled in an accident that left her banged-up pretty badly. Then in May, I landed a new job, and the house sold, and we traded my annoying Kia for a new Honda Odyssey. The rest of the year was up and down, but it definitely had some great moments.

It’s that time of year again! Time to kick some ass in the metrics department. Here’s the deep-dive look at my reading in 2014 and how it went. (For my 2012 metrics, see this entry. There are no 2013 metrics for a variety of reasons.)

Overview

At the beginning of the year, I set the goal of reading 50 books in 2014. As unemployment crept onward during the first half of the year, it began to look unlikely — as of May 1st, I was 8 books behind schedule. Once I got re-employed, and started taking public transportation in early June, my rate of consumption accelerated rapidly.